The 64th edition of the British Film Institute London Film Festival (LFF) revealed its full program Tuesday, containing a robust line-up of 58 features from around the world, as well as a range of extended reality (XR) projects and shorts. As previously announced, Steve MacQueen’s “Mangrove” will open the festival and Francis Lee’s “Ammonite” will
“Shorta,” the timely action-packed Danish thriller that had its world premiere in Venice Critics’ Week this weekend, has now been sold by Charades in a number of territories. Directed by up-and-coming Danish filmmakers Frederik Louis Hviid and Anders Ølholm, “Shorta” unfolds in the aftermath of the killing of 19-year-old Talib Ben Hassi while in custody.
Oscar-winning actor Penelope Cruz is set to star in the 1970s-set Italian movie “L’immensita,” to be directed by Emanuele Crialese, the critically acclaimed helmer of “Respiro.” “L’immensita” is represented in international markets by Pathé (“Judy,” “Pain & Glory”) and in the U.S. by CAA. Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Gangarossa at Fremantle-owned Wildside are producing the
As the first major film festival to take place in the pandemic era, there’s a gravity to the 77th Venice Biennale simply by virtue of the show going on under such fraught global conditions. Yet 2020 has also sparked an unprecedented awareness of racial discourse, and as such, it’s essential to note that there hasn’t
Federation Kids & Family and leading European kids entertainment company TeamTO are joining forces on the new animated comedy series “Presto! School of Magic,” a spinoff of Studiocanal’s animated feature hit “The House of Magic.” Federation Kids & Family will be repping the series in international markets outside of China. Set to be launch this
Hipgnosis Songs founder Merck Mercuriadis named Ted Cockle president and Amy Thomson as chief catalogue officer of the company. Cockle was most recently president of Virgin EMI in the U.K., which under his tenure managed the recorded music for artists including Queen, Elton John, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, George Michael, Justin Bieber, Emeli Sande, The
“The Venture Bros.” has been canceled by Adult Swim after seven seasons, creator Christopher McCulloch announced on Twitter on Monday. McCulloch said he and the writers had been in the middle of writing season 8 when they received the news a few months ago that the show would not be returning to air. “Unfortunately, it’s
Kevin Dobson, an actor best known for his starring roles on the CBS shows “Kojak” and “Knots Landing,” died on Sunday. He was 77. The United Veterans Council of San Joaquin County announced Dobson’s death on Monday afternoon. He served as a former chairman of the organization. A former Army soldier and Long Island Rail
TV spinoffs are typically predicated on likeable characters that fans want to learn more about and see again. This is not the case with Starz’s “Power” sequel “Power Book II: Ghost,” which premiered Sunday night, and follows Tariq (Michael Rainey Jr.) as he establishes a new life after having killed his dad (Omari Hardwick). Tariq’s
“One Night in Miami” is one of those dramas with a hooky, irresistible meeting-of-the-minds premise that places four legends in a single room, all so that we can sit back and watch the verbal-philosophical fireworks fly. The movie takes place on Feb. 25, 1964, the night that Cassius Clay, at 22, won the world heavyweight
The strangest, most up-in-the-air Oscar season has begun with the 77th Venice Film Festival, which features more social distancing and less star power due to COVID-19. But that doesn’t mean that Venice has lost its luster for catapulting a movie into the awards race. The first bonafide major contender for the 2021 Oscars season arrives
Susan Rovner has been tapped for the top entertainment programming job at NBCUniversal. A source close to the situation confirmed to Variety that Rovner has accepted an offer for the new role. In heading up the entertainment programming division, Rovner will be responsible for scripted, unscripted, late-night and alternative programming for NBC, the NBCU cable
Taylor Swift’s “Folklore” continued its run at the top of the Rolling Stone album chart for a sixth consecutive week, as sales actually increased from week five. In the latest frame, “Folklore” collected 91,2000 album units, a figure that combines sales and streaming numbers. That’s up from 87,400 album units the week before. Actual full-album
As the West Coast suffered through a record-setting holiday weekend heatwave, industry insiders worried that sweltering conditions in Los Angeles may further slow Hollywood’s return to business as usual. The threat of rolling electrical outages and brownouts would be a greater danger to the entertainment industry if it were not already largely shut down due
French distributor Damned Films has closed a deal with sales outfit Dreamlab films for “Invasion,” director Shahram Mokri’s Iranian film “Careless Crime” that will have its world premiere Tuesday at the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons section. Damned will distribute in France, overseas territories administered by France, Monaco and Andorra. [embedded content] Set 40 years ago,
How much healing can a good massage provide? A fast-fading hour or so of relaxation, or a more sustained sense of general well-being and peace with the world, so long as it’s topped up with repeat appointments? In “Never Gonna Snow Again,” a searching, cryptic satire of bourgeois insularity in modern Poland, the magic hands
How do you commemorate a shameful history long suppressed? One way is to render it in black and white images so stark there’s nowhere for the shame to hide, a feat achieved with stunning clarity by Andrei Konchalovsky’s perversely beautiful and coldly furious “Dear Comrades!” (exclamation point ironic). Meticulous and majestic, epic in scope and
Watch “We Are Who We Are” with the volume up. There are no high speed car chases or swelling orchestras in the new HBO/Sky drama. From co-creator and director Luca Guadagnino, the series centers a wandering pack of teenagers living on an American military base in an otherwise sleepy little Italian town circa 2016. And
Liev Schreiber will star in a movie adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s novel “Across the River and Into the Trees.” Tribune Pictures and The Exchange announced the project Monday and said production is planned to start in Venice, Italy, and the Veneto region under COVID-19 guidelines next month. “Across the River and Into the Trees” has
Taiwan brings virtual reality (VR) projects featured at this year’s Venice Film Festival to the island as one of the world’s 15 local hosts of the event’s competition section as it gains a greater international foothold in the discipline that blends cinema and technology. Forty-four VR films from 24 countries — including three from Taiwan
Taiwan’s ambition to strengthen its global presence by exporting its cultural content abroad and boosting its production hub status is made apparent with the establishment of the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA), which has launched various funding initiatives to back local projects’ international ventures. Backed by a solid foundation of state-of-art technology, TAICCA’s collaboration with
Regina King has said the response to her feature directorial debut can either “open doors or close doors for more Black female directors,” throwing into sharp relief the double standards in place for creators of color. “Unfortunately, across the world, that’s how things seem to work. One woman gets a shot and if she does
Paolo Taviani, of revered filmmaking duo the Taviani brothers, is back behind the camera — this time without his brother Vittorio, who died in 2018. Taviani is shooting “Leonora Addio,” a surreal drama that takes its cue from a short story by great Italian playwright and author Luigi Pirandello. It’s a long-gestating project that Paolo
Do you want your company to be like Netflix? Co-founder and co-CEO Reed Hastings has written a step-by-step recipe detailing how Netflix created and evolved its unconventional corporate culture — although, as he freely admits, not every company can or should follow the same playbook. Hastings’ “No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention”
Paris Hilton has been in the “due for a re-evaluation” stage of her career for far longer than she was evaluated in the first place. In 2008, a documentary about Hilton, entitled “Paris, Not France,” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival; in it, Hilton, one of several women whose time in the limelight in
Before he co-founded Netflix, Reed Hastings ran a debugging-tool company, Pure Software. And he’s convinced the morass of red tape he put in place at Pure led to the company’s eventual irrelevance and sale to a rival. With Netflix, Hastings has focused on building a culture of employee empowerment — which he documents in a
Spain’s hybrid 4th Conecta Fiction, Europe’s biggest TV co-production forum with Latin America, closed its on-site doors on Sept. 3, though its online complement runs until Sept. 11. Following, 10 takeaways from a unique 2020 edition: Co-Production Paradigm Shift Conecta Fiction Reboot’s most significant news may have broken Thursday: The announcement that ViacomCBS Intl. Studios
Sophia Chang’s career is nothing, if not colorful. The Korean Canadian storyteller, screenwriter and author has a pilot in the works at FX for her original dramedy, tentatively titled “The Baddest Bitch in the Room,” Variety has learned exclusively. The show is named after her memoir, which hits bookshelves on Tuesday and chronicles her life
In today’s Global Bulletin the U.K. Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport asks for an extension to the current furlough scheme, San Sebastian will close with Fernando Trueba’s “Forgotten We’ll Be,” ITV looks to invest, MediaWorks sells its TV business to Discovery, ZDF commissions a new WWII factual series and “The Eight Hundred” gets
Dennis Ruh will take charge director of the European Film Market (EFM) at the Berlinale from Nov. 1. The EFM is set to go hybrid for its 2021 edition that will take place Feb. 11-18. The 2021 edition will see online screenings in addition to the regular booth areas, while screenings will continue to take